Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Progressive Breakfast: Trump Nominates 'Alligator' Clayton To Run SEC

MORNING
MESSAGE

...
Trump has brought so many swamp creatures into his administration that it has
become a cliché to say that Trump is filling the swamp with alligators. Jay
Clayton, Trump’s nominee to head the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC),
appears to be one more alligator ... Clayton was, literally, the “Goldman Sachs
bailout lawyer.” He represented Goldman and other Wall Street firms during the
aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis ... Clayton is a partner at Sullivan
& Cromwell, a law firm that is, according to FN Financial News, “more
closely associated with Wall Street than perhaps any other law firm.” ... With
so many Wall Street ties, ”Clayton will be the most financially conflicted SEC
chairman in history.”

Plus
$1B for the border wall. CNN: “The money will fund 14 miles of new border
wall in San Diego, 28 miles of new levee wall barriers and six miles of new
border wall in the Rio Grande Valley region and 14 miles of replacement fencing
in San Diego. The fencing would likely include concrete elements … Estimates for
a full wall along the Southern border have ranged from $12 billion to more than
$20 billion.”

Prospects
for funding the wall dim. Politico: “…Democratic leaders are vowing to block
any legislation that includes a single penny for the wall. With the GOP consumed
by its own divisions, the White House and Hill Republicans will have to rely on
Democratic votes to avoid a government shutdown … Republican leaders, wary of
this, are considering a plan that would not directly tie the border wall money
to the April 28 government funding deadline…”

More
from Politico: “Schumer also insists he has the ‘upper hand’ in negotiations
to keep the government open, reasoning that Republicans will get blamed for a
shutdown even if it’s Democrats who vote down a spending bill because it
contains funding for the border wall.”

Medicaid
proves difficult to cut. NYT: “…Medicaid has surpassed Medicare in the
number of Americans it covers. It has grown gradually into a behemoth that
provides for the medical needs of one in five Americans … In the Senate, many
Republicans, echoing their states’ governors, had worried about jeopardizing the
treatment of people addicted to opioids, depriving the working poor, children
and people with disabilities of health care and in the long run reducing funding
for the care of elderly people in nursing homes.”

Trump
plans outreach to Dems on infrastructure. Axios: “…, the White House is
talking about moving to a novel, risky strategy: tackling tax reform and
infrastructure at the same time (not necessarily in the same bill) … It’s a
major strategic shift — infrastructure was likely to be parked until next
year.”

Trump
Targets Climate Today

Climate
executive order to be signed today. Bloomberg: “President Donald Trump is
moving aggressively to undo policies designed to keep the carbon-cutting
promises the U.S. made alongside nearly 200 other countries in Paris, while
stopping short of a decision to formally withdraw from that landmark climate
accord … Some changes will happen immediately … Other policy pivots will take
years of work, such as reversing the Clean Power Plan…”

Coal
jobs still not coming back. NYT: “The new order would mean that older coal
plants that had been marked for closings would probably stay open, said Robert
W. Godby, an energy economist at the University of Wyoming. That would extend
the market demand for coal for up to a decade. But even so, “’he mines that are
staying open are using more mechanization … even if we saw an increase in coal
production, we could see a decrease in coal jobs,’ he said.”

Conservatives
unhappy with EPA chief Scott Pruitt’s role. Politico: “…Pruitt successfully
argued against including language revoking the agency’s 2009 ‘endangerment
finding,’ [which] declared that greenhouse gas emissions threaten human health
and welfare and made EPA legally responsible for regulating carbon dioxide …
[Pruitt] argued in closed-door meetings that the legal hurdles to overturning
the finding were massive, and the administration would be setting itself up for
a lengthy court battle … They hope the White House, perhaps senior adviser
Stephen Bannon, will intervene and encourage the president to overturn the
endangerment finding.”

But
executive order “worse than you thought” says Mother Jones’ Rebecca Leber:
“The president will instruct agencies to rescind a moratorium on coal leasing on
public lands; rewrite limits on methane emissions from the oil and gas industry;
and ignore the EPA’s current calculation on the costs of carbon pollution. There
are also broad directives reversing an Obama initiative requiring that federal
departments consider climate mitigation strategy and the national security risks
of global warming.”

Oil
in Dakota Access Pipeline. AP: “The Dakota Access pipeline developer said
Monday that it has placed oil in the pipeline under a Missouri River reservoir
in North Dakota and that it’s preparing to put the pipeline into service … The
[court] filing did not say when the company expected the pipeline would be
carrying oil from North Dakota to a shipping point in Illinois.”

Gorsuch
In Trouble?

Gorsuch
may not have the votes. Politico: “Senior Democratic sources are now
increasingly confident that Gorsuch can’t clear a filibuster, saying his ceiling
is likely mid- to upper-50s on the key procedural vote … Sen. Bill Nelson
(D-Fla.) said Monday he’ll oppose Gorsuch on the cloture vote … only one Senate
Democrat has firmly said he’s willing to help advance Gorsuch’s nomination to a
final confirmation vote: Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia … everal other
Democrats on Monday were much less definitive.”

Republicans
not offering deals. Bloomberg: “Several Republican senators said they see
little chance of a bipartisan deal to avert any move by party leaders to change
Senate rules, as happened under President George W. Bush when a compromise by a
‘gang’ of 14 senators ended a similar feud.”

Deregulation
Bonanza

Trump
signs deregulation bills. USA Today: “The rules canceled by Trump’s pen
include: The ‘Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces’ rule, which barred companies from
receiving federal contracts if they had a history of violating wage, labor or
workplace safety laws … A Bureau of Land Management rule known as ‘Planning
2.0,’ that gave the federal government a bigger role in land use decisions … Two
regulations on measuring school performance and teacher training under the Every
Student Succeeds Act…”

CEOs
steering Trump policies. Politico: “The Trump administration is poised to
give the business community even more influence through its new ‘White House
Office of American Innovation,’ … career staff at federal agencies are being
left out of policy discussions amid simmering distrust between Trump’s advisers
and the thousands of bureaucrats stationed across the government … Trump often
asks CEOs during private conversations to list the federal regulations they
would most like to eliminate…”

Progressive
Breakfast is a daily morning email highlighting news stories of interest to
activists. Progressive Breakfast and OurFuture.org are projects of People's
Action. more
»